May 31, 2006

As a paraphrase of the old Coca-Cola commercial about wishing to teach the world to sing, Nicholas Negroponte wished to get the world's children online. This MIT Media Lab founder proposed a PC that would cost only a hundred bucks. Well, that price tag is up to about 130 dollars but it could be a go by next April.

Years before the federal ban on lead in paint, Baltimore was the first municipality in the U.S. to not allow any lead in paint for interior use. Well, Baltimore is again a pioneer when it comes to lead paint. The Housing Authority of Baltimore, which faces a number of lead-paint lawsuits, is trying a novel defense. It has told the plaintiff: Forget suing since we can't afford to pay.

"I can't comment on that," the Harvard Business School (HBS) alumnus, former corporate executive and current entrepreneur told me. I had asked him about the Rev. Michael Madden situation at St. John's Parish in Darien, Connecticut.

May 30, 2006

"There won't be any 'Corporate America,'" predicted Chris Steffen, former Honeywell Chief Financial Officer. That assertion became part of a speech I was writing for him during the early 1990s. Well, it seems that Steffen has disappeared from the C-level but he was right about the end of Corporate America.

Fellow Baby Boomer Allan Berube recalls in "White Trash" (edited by Matt Wray and Annalee Newitz) growing up in Sunset Trailer Park in Bayonne, New Jersey. Like many optimists in those post-war times, his parents assumed they were just passing through and on their way to a real single-family house. They weren't. And Berube chronicles the stigma of being trailer trash.

How can we know in what direction the Rhode Island (RI)I lead paint saga is moving? Follow the money. And, as Justin Scheck points out in his article today in THE RECORDER, the money to watch is what partners in law firms are concerned about continuing to earn. If they sense that their ongoing revenue stream might be threatened, they will probably bail.

The best thing that could happen to us depressives in America is for perky Katie Couric to, well, get depressed. Not that I wish that "black dog," as Winston Churchill called this disease, on anyone. But in America, a nation that worships get-up-and-go and a can-do attitude, Katie's slide into sluggishness and helplessness could be a game-changer in how depression is viewed and treated.

May 29, 2006

"We have declared you a public nuisance," the dour headmaster informs the goofy student in THE NEW YORKER cartoon. No, that cartoon hasn't appeared yet but it will. The odds are that the Rhode Island (RI) lead paint trial saga will end up exposing how ridiculous the legal theory public nuisance is.